
Glass £^7 
Book J£ 



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\ sermon 



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PREACIIE1> IN JtfERRlAlAjCK, V. H., M. i 



■ *. . iiai. Hi. 1865, 

IX THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. 

..\ nil. oWasiON of nil. 



BY 



REV. EDWIN J. HART. 



1*1 KM SHED BY REQUEST 



MAN of | ESTER. N. H. : 

UKSli\ i.'.V.E, BOOK AND JOR PRINTER. 

1 8 6 5 . 




* % 




A SERMON 



PREACHED IN MERRIMACK, X. H. 



4>9 



APRIL 16, 18G5, 






IX THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 



ON THE OCCASION OF THE 



^ssasshtatiflnflf Jka{rara|fr: 



BY 



REV. EDWIN J. HART. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



MANCHESTER, N. H. : 

HENRY A. GAGE, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
18 65. 



ASZf 






SERMON 



XI SAMUEL, I: XIX — "THE l'.KAUTY OF ISRAEL IS SLAIN UPON THY 
HIGH PLAGES; HOW ARE THE MIGHTY FALLEN. 11 

It appears from the history of Saul, that David had lit- 
tle occasion to love and mourn for him. To Jonathan his 
soul was knit in closest union, and deepest sympathy, and 
warmest affection. But as these ancient warriors fell in 
the battle, the soul of David grieves, and his harp quavers 
with the tones of mournful eulogy and saddest lamenta- 
tion, for both of them. Thus our hearts stunned and hor- 
rified by the unlooked for and unparalleled assassination 
of our Chief Magistrate, the attempted murder of the Sec- 
retary of State, and of his son, Assistant Secretary, lament 
and pour out our sorrows before the Lord. Our Jubilee 
week has ended in a cry of national anguish, which none 
but a human fiend could mock or despise. Come sit thee 
-down in the dust ! oh Land that didst rejoice. Put off all 
thy garments of joy. Clothe thee with sackcloth. Bedew 
the earth with thy flowing tears. Mourn as the bride her 
husband, slain at the bridal-feast, or in the bridal cham- 



ber. Touch no pleasant meat, neither drink any rejoicing 
drink. Ye children, begotten of a long and cruel bond- 
age, just born to freedom's manhood, gather ye close 
around your Heavenly Father, and breathe out your woes 
into his compassionate ear. Freemen and bondmen mourn 
and weep. " Oh, God, thou givest us tears to drink in 
great measure" — " How marvelous are thy judgments, and 
thy ways past finding out." I scarcely feel like speaking, 
or you like hearing to-day. The sobs of the spirit stifle 
the living voice. The tears of the soul are hot within the 
heart, and the fountain of feeling is choked up with our heavy 
sorrow. Men turn pale in the street ; women cry out in 
anguish in our homes ; children weep as for a dying fath- 
er. As the mournful tidings fly tremblingly through the 
Land, the nation's heart, stunned, palsied by the blow, al- 
most ceases to beat ! One great, swelling cry goes up to 

l 
God, who sends back his strengthening, comforting word, 

"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto- 
gether." These words, which were used in the last inaug- 
ural address of our lamented Chief Magistrate, are a 
mighty cable, holding our anchor of hope, fast and firmly 
grounded in the goodness and wisdom of God. "The 
Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer : my 
God, my strength, in whom I will trust ; my buckler and 
the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." 

The crime that has plunged the nation into a sea of sor- 
sow, can hardly be paralleled in all history. The crimes 
of the past arc surpassed by this last accomplished deed of 



rebellion and slavery. I have found but one, in my read- 
ings of history, that approaches it in atrocity and diabol- 
ism — the crucifixion of the Son of Man, being always ex- 
cepted. The assassination of William, Prince of Orange, 
by Balthazer Gerard, employed by the Duke of Parma, 

*Bwith the approval of the Church of Rome, can scarcely 

•*equal this for daring, and degree of guilt. 

Behold the men so foully asssassinated or attempted to 
be murdered, — the Chief Magistrate of a great nation, 
the Secretary, of State, and the son of the latter, men on 
whom rested the load of a nation's solvation and regener- 
ation. Their political position is understood by you all. 
The worthy deeds they have done have passed into histo- 
ry. They have influenced the civilized world, to the joy 
of the oppressed and the wronged everywhere. They are 
men whom the world will delight to honer to the end of 
time. His name will be infamous, execrable, as that of Ju- 
dus Iscariot, who slew them. Men who now rejoice in their 
fall, and call their murder " good news," will be remem- 
bered as are the High Priests and Council, who condemned 
our Lord, and scorned and derided him in his dying ag- 

g^bnies. 

™ Thi position of these men on all the great philanthropic 
movements and measures of the age, place them among 
the foremost and noblest in this world. Our great and good 
President has only labored for the welfare of our whole 
notion, present and future, fie was noble spirited, gener- 
ous-heaited, masnanimous to all : being only desirous to 



6 

give their natural and civil rights to every man ; willing to 
forgive much, and pardon great offenses, could lie but see 
the country saved and the cause of disunion destroyed. 
He had devotion to duty. He used no craft nor sued for 
favor. He feared no man's frown. As he said in the be- 
ginning of his public duties, " I have an oath, registered 
in heaven," so he conducted to the final hour. He felt 
himself to be the servant of the people, and the minister 
of God, to guard and maintain the highest interests of a 
free people — and to labor for the benefit of generations to 
come. He did not disdain the poor and the oppressed.; 
not opening their prison doors to destroy rebellion and se- 
cession alone, but also to blot from our national history a 
system that stops at no crime, and to lift an entire branch 
of the human family into the rights and privileges of men. 
He was the hearty friend of the poor bond-men, as well as 
their strong deliverer. And for this slavery's minions have 
killed him, the noblest spirit of the hour, the head of the 
nation. -His murderers are secession and slavery. The 
assassin is only the instrument of the infamous system, 
that having failed to destroy the national life, revenges it- 
self by shedding the blood of its Savior. The satanic spir- 
it of slavery, we thought was fully known before this. 
The deliberate butchery of our union soldiers by the cruel 
Forest, the designed starvation of tens of thousands of 
prisoners of war by the act of Confederate officials, we 
thought, had revealed the fiendish nature of this unright- 
eous system. But we were mistaken. It wanted the life 



of the people s President four years ago, and to-day the 
strong man and the noble soul have passed away from 
earth. Who shall say deal gently with slavery now ? — 
Who will ask any mercy for a system that does the dark- 
est deeds of hell, in the hour of the nation's rejoicing. 
He is not worthy to have the protection of the national 
arm, who asks anything but the speediest extermination 
of this excreable mother of all abominations. Let the sys- 
tem be ground to powder. Our martyred President had 
done his duty, finished his work. He remained constant 
and hopeful in disaster and defeat. He read the signs of 
the times, and knew the hour had come to destroy the great 
enemy of civilization, humanity and religion. It is cer- 
tain that his active work was finished. Having led the 
people through the wilderness, and looked down upon the 
land to be possessed by a free nation, from the crumbling 
tower and burning throne of slavery, he must put off the 
burden of a nation's cares, and enter into his rest. God 
has permitted it thus to be, to the end that He might be 
glorified. He has designs ' to accomplish by this awful 
sin of man, that will be glorious as those already wrought 
out, by the attempted secession of the slave States. No 
life can be more perfectly finished than this, which we de- 
sired and prayed might be long prolonged. He died a 
Christian; the benefactor of millions; the admired leader 
of a free people. He has left us, in his last inaugural ad- 
dress, sentiments in which a mourning people may read 
his heart, and rest the assurance that he now wears a more 



radiant crown, has entered into a higher glory and joy that 
earth can offer the worthy. He gave us, as a nation, this 
excellent, dying counsel. " It may seem strange that any 
man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing 
his bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us 
' not judge, that we he not judged.' " The prayer of both 
could not be answered. That of neither has been an- 
swered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. — 
" Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs 
be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the 
offence cometh." If we shall suppose that American sla- 
very is one of these offences which, in the providence, must 
needs come, but which having continued through His appoint- 
ed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both 
North and South this terrible war, as the woe, due to those 
by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any 
departure from those divine attributes which the believers 
in the living God always ascribe to Him ? 

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if 
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by 
the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood, drawn 
with the lash be paid with another, drawn with the sword. 
As was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be 
said, that " the judgments of the Lord are true and right- 
eous altogether." 

" With malice towards none, with charity to all, with 



firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the 
nation's wound, to care for him who shall have borne the 
battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which 
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves and with all nations." 

Let the nation heed these weighty words, pervaded with 
the spirit of Christ, and recognizing the presence of a just 
and holy God, in all the affairs of man and nations. A 
document so saturated with the spirit of religion, is the 
most precious legacy of the people to whom they are ad- 
dressed. They tell us that he who uttered them, studied 
the providence of God, and had a warm and confident 
trust in the divine goodness, grace and mercy, as well as 
a firm belief that for the sins of the nation all this evil was 
sent upon us. May they be engraven on the tablet of the 
nation's memory, and be the pillar of fire to guide his suc- 
cessor and the people, in the work yet remaining to be 
done. It is beyond the power of man to predict the ef- 
fects of this crime. God will over-rule it for good. He 
is able and will do it. The nation will come with its wound- 
ed, bleeding heart, to Him. The prayer of the Secretary 
of War, that God would over-rule this great trouble to the 
good of the nation, is offered by every praying spirit. Bit- 
terly as we mourn the assassination of the President, great 
as his loss must be, in the business of reconstructing the 
Union, and healing these gaping, bleeding wounds, in the 
body of the nation, wc ought to look confidingly to Heav- 



10 

en for the divine wisdom to guide our rulers ; to inspire 
their hearts with mercy as well as justice ; and to prepare 
the people to act with holy courage and Christian firmness. 
We should guard against the spirit and acts of revenge, 
and equally against that of indifference to crime and sin. 
We are to leave vengeance with God. It is for us to do 
His will ; to punish, by His commandment, when and where 
the interest of mankind require it. We have perhaps been 
too anxious for peace, and too much inclined to deal gent- 
ly with the criminal. If so God is nerving the arm of the 
nation to avenge His injured honor and law, as did the 
zealous Phineas, who thrust the prince of a chief house 
among the Simeonites through with his javelin, and thus 
turned away the Lord's wrath from the children of Israel. 
We cannot believe that the ivork, of which our martyred 
chief was an instrument of carrying onward, till hope was 
crowned with assurance of success, is to be stayed, and the 
wheels of progress to turn backward. A mightier will 
than the will of the dead, remains. It is the will of the 
people, that the work of destroying rebellion and complet- 
ing emancipation, should be finished. The will of the peo 
pie is co-incident, we are confident, with the will of God. 
The result will be a more absolute destruction of the sys 
tem that has so burdened us with guilt, and so heavily la- 
den us with the judgments of God. Who can ask any fa- 
vor now for that system that has poured out in the street 
the best blood of the nation ? Who will think any man, 
who has engaged in this wicked conspiracy, can be safely 



11 

permitted to manage again the affairs of our nation ? No 
remnant of this barbarizing system should be left, rooted 
in the national soil, to grow and strengthen for fresh deeds 
of crime and misery. We see now the naked heart of this 
beast, that cometh out of the bottomless pit, and is des- 
tined to go into perdition. We see what any supporter of 
our laws and administration might receive at the hands of 
the agents of treason and rebellion, could they but succeed 
in their foul work. Solemn and responsible as the work 
is, the interests of good government, of human welfare 
and divine justice, require us to blot out the name of these 
wicked men from under heaven. Law and justice should 
take their course, lest their power should be weakened, and 
greater evils than we have suffered, crowd the future and 
curse posterity. Severity to the leaders of crime is mercy 
to those whom they have led, or 'might lead into doing 
their wicked designs. We believe it is the solemn duty of 
the government to take away all power and opportunity to 
involve the nation in other evils, from all the leading spir- 
its of this wicked rebellion. We are to say, with the psalm- 
ist, " All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off." " I 
will early destroy all the wicked of the land." It is not 
safe that any man of these have power in it. Our hope in 
this day of trouble is in the Lord our God. "The fear of 
man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the 
Lord shall be safe." " None of them that trust in Him 
shall be desolate." " It is better to trust in the Lord than 
• f <"> put confidence In man. It is hotter to trust in the Lord 



12 

than to put confidence in princes/' It can but be, that all 
the virtue and the purity of the land will draw nearer 
God, now that " the strong staff and the beautiful rod," on 
which we leaned, is broken. There are evidences of this 
already. As the sad intelligence came into our cities, on 
the wings of lightning, messengers of God, the servants of 
the Most High went into the house of prayer to weep and 
cry, " God be merciful unto us and bless us, and cause thy 
face to shine upon us." " Let God arise, let His enemies 
be scattered, let them also that hate Him flee before Him." 
No attitude is more becoming the nation than that of sup- 
plication. Here we clasp a pillar of almighty strength. 
" Thou, Lord, remainest forever, and thy throne from 
generation to generation." " God is our refuge and 
strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will 
we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though 
the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, 
though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though 
the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." Even 
nature herself, yesterday, seemed to sympathize with our 
afflicted land. As the joy of our heart ceased, and the 
people stood weeping before the Lord, the winds of heav- 
en came up through all the land, sobbing and sighing 
requiums for our dead. The heavens began to weep, 
and a pall of thick darkness came over the earth. It was 
God that walked before us. " He maketh the clouds his 
chariots. He walketh on the wings of the wind." I heard 
His voice. He said, " Be still, and know that I am God ; 



1 will be exalted among the heathen. 1 will be exalted in 
the earth." And when again I looked forth, the dark- 
ness was passed, the clouds were scattered, the sobbing 
and weeping of the heavens were ended. I beheld only 
benignity and grace on the calm and holy face of 
Deity. Heaven and earth proclaimed " The Lord of hosts 
is with vs ; the God of Jacob is our refuge." 0, my 
nation, take this prophecy of God to thy w r ounded and 
burdened heart. Truth shall not turn back, nor justice 
fall by the sword. Putting one hand around God, and 
the other around the afflicted people, may he, who now 
leads us, bring all into the promised land, and cut off 
the wicked, that are in it. God of the fatherless, hus- 
band of the widow, be merciful and sustain the widowed 
and the orphaned. Protector of thy people, suffer not 
any wicked to triumph and reproach thy name. God, 
look upon the souls of the slain, under the altar, that 
are " killed for the word of God and for the testimony 
which they held," who cry unto thee with a loud voice, 
"How long, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge 
and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth." 
" We wait for thy salvation, Lord." But this attempt to 
kill the principles that govern this nation's course ; this 
foul murder of the embodied sovereignty of the nation, 
will not succeed. It is the roar of the chained dragon ; h 
is a stroke of the scorpion's fang, which the mighty an- 
gel is casting bound into the bottomless pit. Above, and 
controlling all, a regenerated nation beholds the Sever- 



14 

eign God. Calm and fearless, we launch forth under a 
new pilot upon the tempestuous sea, knowing that he is 
only the helm of the ship of State, while Jehovah is the 
arm, bringing us into the port of peace. Our un dimmed 
eye sees the lofty headlands, the harbor opening out, 
peaceful and secure. Stretching far, populous and rich, is 
the home of a free and sovereign people. Inscribed on 
all the temples of freedom is our motto, " In God we. 
trust." Within gathers the great brotherhood of nations, 
molded by the wisdom and power of God into one nation. 
At their song the whole earth is moved. 

" The Lord, our God, is clothed with might. 

The winds obey His will ; 
He speaks — and in his heavenly hight 

The rolling sun stands still. 

Rebel, ye waves — and o'er the land 

With threatening aspect roar ! 
The Lord uplifts His awful hand, 

And chains 3011 to the shore. 

Howl, ye winds of night ! your force combine ! 

Without His high behest, 
Ye shall not, in the mountain pine, 

Disturb the sparrow's nest. 

His voice sublime is heard afar. 

In distant peals it dies; 
He yokes the whirlwind to His car. 

And sweeps the howling skies. 

Ye nations bend — in reverence bend ; 

Ye monarchs, wait His nod, 
And bid the choral song ascend 

To celebrate our God." 



